


Coming Apart (In My Arms)

by harborshore



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Blowjobs of Agency, Crossdressing, First Time, Happy Ending, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 02:26:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1950s Avengers AU. Bucky is a war veteran, Steve works for Tony Stark’s newspaper. Bucky doesn't talk about the war. They share an apartment and they go to work and nothing's like it was before Bucky left. And then Tony lends them his cabin for a vacation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Apart (In My Arms)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goshemily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/gifts).



> For Emily, because she survived the bar. The title is from “Old White Lincoln” by the Gaslight Anthem. Thank you to barricadeur for a stellar last-minute beta.

Bucky has a tattoo. It's pretty new; he got it while he was in the army. Steve's seen it once, when Bucky wrestled out of his t-shirt and put another one on and Steve was too slow to turn away in time. It's a compass on his left side, blue and black and north pointing straight at his heart. 

Steve didn't ask about it, but Bucky shrugged after he'd pulled on his shirt and said, "I got it to remind me of home. Kind of stupid, but there it is." 

"You did come home," Steve said. 

He couldn't go to Korea. His lungs kept him out. Bucky was injured after eight months; his knee still doesn't work right, but he's healed well enough to walk and work and be here. He doesn't talk about the war. They share an apartment and they go to work and nothing's like it was before Bucky left, but at least he's here.

"I did," Bucky said, but he was quiet after that. Steve made up his mind, then, and asked his boss at the newspaper (Steve does illustrations) if he meant it when he said Steve could borrow his cabin upstate some weekend, if he wanted to get away. Normally he wouldn’t have asked, but Tony Stark doesn't really seem to understand the concept of employer and employee and treats most of them like his friends. Steve didn't understand it at first, but he thinks now maybe Tony's just lonely, so asking didn’t feel like an imposition. Besides, it seemed to make Tony happy when he did.

So he's taking Bucky upstate for a couple of days, just to see if it'll help, a little. If Bucky will go, that is.

Bucky blinks at him when he comes home with the suggestion.

“And your boss’s just lending his cabin to you? Just like that?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Tony’s a good guy.”

“You don’t have to pay him in any way to do it, right?” Bucky looks a little strange. 

Steve’s not sure what he means by “in any way,” but he shakes his head. “He didn’t even want to take something off of next month’s wage when I offered.”

“You--Steve. I don’t need a vacation.”

“You kinda do,” Steve says gently. Bucky hates his job at the plant, and he’s been irritable and skittish for weeks. “Don’t worry about it, okay, it’s just a couple of days, and my boss has at least five different houses. He says doesn’t even like this one because it’s so small, so he doesn’t mind lending it out.” 

Bucky still looks a little strange, but he agrees to go. They’ll take a bus as far as it’ll get them and then hitchhike the rest of the way. Tony said he’d have someone lay in some groceries and such, even though Steve told him not to, that they could bring their own food. 

“It’s a vacation, Steve,” Tony said. “Just two days, sure, but don’t worry about it. I don’t mind having someone stock up for you. Just come back with some more pictures for my paper, alright?”

\--

The thing is, Steve knows it isn’t right, what he feels for Bucky. He knows it. But he’s still drawing Bucky leaning against the bus window, asleep, because he’s always watching Bucky. 

\--

The so-called rustic cabin is more like a country estate. Steve almost doesn’t want to go inside. He should have known Tony’s definitions of “rustic” weren’t like anyone else’s. 

Bucky snorts. “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t have to do any special favors for your boss before he lent this to you?”

Steve blushes; he can’t help it. Now he hears what Bucky means. “No, of course not. Tony’s--Tony wouldn’t do anything like that. And besides, his fiancée is lovely, she practically runs the paper for him at this point.”

“She’s lovely, huh,” Bucky says. There’s something tight in his voice.

Steve swallows. “Tony said there’d be food,” he says. “Just enough to get us through the weekend. He he always keeps his houses stocked, in case he wants to come up.”

“Not bad if you can swing it, I guess,” Bucky says. “Let’s get installed, then?”

“You go find us some food,” Steve says, bending to grab Bucky’s bag. “You’re the one who actually knows how to cook, a bit. I’ll go put away our stuff upstairs.”

“No, I--” Bucky grabs for his bag, but Steve is faster. “I’ll get it, Steve, don’t—“

“I don’t mind, you know I don’t,” Steve says, walking towards the stairs. He’s usually the one who does the laundry at home, folding stuff and putting it away.

“Fine,” Bucky says. His voice is weird, tight. 

Steve makes his way upstairs and blinks. There’s more than one bedroom, even. This really is far too nice a house to lend out. Back in Brooklyn, he sleeps on the couch – and that’s an apartment he pays rent for. 

He puts his own suitcase in the smaller room that overlooks the garden, and he takes Bucky’s suitcase into the room that faces the woods. Bucky likes trees.

He can hear Bucky banging around downstairs and he grins down at the bag. Deciding he might as well help Bucky out since he’s making him cook, he opens the suitcase and starts taking out the clothes Bucky brought and. Oh. 

There’s a shirt and an undershirt, sure, and underwear that’s the same brand Steve buys, but there’s also something that--there’s lace. There’s straps, and it’s white and lacy. Bucky has a dress in his bag. 

Steve’s mouth is dry. He finds he’s sitting down without really remembering doing so, the dress still held tightly in his hands. He doesn’t understand. But it’s soft, it’s really soft, and he can’t help it, he’s seeing Bucky, pale shoulders curving under the straps and those dark eyes. He’d be beautiful.

Not like he’s a girl, no. But beautiful. 

He sits there for a while, then carefully puts the dress back into the suitcase. He thinks, he thinks Bucky must be worrying about it.

Back in the kitchen, Bucky’s fixing something on the stove and doesn’t turn around when Steve comes in.

“Everything okay up there?” he says. Steve wishes he could take away the tension he sees in Bucky’s shoulders. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it was fine, Bucky.”

“Your boss left us some eggs, so I’m making a scramble,” Bucky says. 

Steve sits down at the table.

“Sounds good,” he says gently. 

It is, too. Bucky can cook. He doesn’t talk about it much but once when he was drunk he told Steve about one of the cooks on his ship, who taught him how to make scrambles and get the most out of army-grade produce (that is, the kind of food that shouldn’t be fed to any thinking creature). Bucky said they used to spend nights together making food because neither of them slept much. 

They finish eating in silence. Steve doesn’t know how to tell Bucky that he did see it and it was fine. He doesn’t feel like he has the right words to reassure him. So they go back upstairs, still silent, and Bucky goes into his room.

Steve sits down on his bed and waits. He knows Bucky well enough to expect—yeah. 

Sure enough, Bucky comes into his room, pale and tense. 

“I’m no good with pretending,” he says, low. “You saw it, right?” 

Steve doesn’t know what to say. He just nods.

“If. I mean. If you want to move out,” Bucky says. He’s not looking at Steve and Steve still doesn’t know what to say but he has to get that look off of Bucky’s face somehow.

“No,” he says. “No, of course I don’t want to move out.”

Bucky looks up, then. His eyes are so dark. “Come on, Steve,” he says. “I know you’re a saint but even you can’t possibly want to live with a faggot like me.”

Steve lets out a strangled laugh. If Bucky only knew how far from a saint he is. “I’m not a saint, Bucky,” he says. “I’m--I really can’t cast the first stone, here.”

Bucky makes a disparaging noise. “Whatever you think you’ve done, it’s not even--”

Steve shakes his head. He needs to get that look off of Bucky’s face but he can’t, right now, he can’t even get the words out of his mouth. It’s been a secret for so long. He reaches out instead, curling his hand over Bucky’s, stroking over his knuckles. Bucky goes even more tense, but he doesn’t pull away.

There is no way to say this, Steve decides. He pulls on Bucky’s hand a little, and Bucky lets him until Steve rises from the bed and leans forward to touch his mouth to Bucky’s fingers.

Bucky pulls his hand away and punches Steve in the face. 

Steve reels back, shocked. “What--” he says.

“Don’t fucking mock me,” Bucky says, snarls, really.

“I’m not,” Steve says helplessly. “I swear I’m not.”

“Well then why did you--” Bucky swallows. He looks anguished, and Steve’s hurting just as much. The pain is just a distant throb but when he touches his mouth, his fingers come away wet.

“You’re bleeding,” Bucky says, and it seems to shock him into moving, leaving the room and coming back with a wet towel. “Goddamnit, Steve, I’m so sorry.” He dabs the towel at Steve’s face, so careful even as he shakes.

And it’s easy, finally, when faced with the way Bucky’s shaking, to still Bucky’s hands and move in close. “Don’t apologize,” he says, muffled in Bucky’s hair. “I’m the one who should. I was trying to say I’ve been looking at you for years but I couldn’t get the words out right. I’m _really_ not the saint here, Bucky.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, but he doesn’t push him away. “Shut up, Steve, don’t you think I would have noticed you looking?”

“You didn’t,” Steve says, because he knows that, knows Bucky never noticed or he would have--something. He would have said something.

Bucky laughs, low and scraping. “I was looking too,” he says, and the words are hard to get out, Steve can feel the way he tenses up. “I was looking too, Steve, I ought to have noticed.”

“You didn’t,” Steve says again, softly, and he brings his arms up, then, to hold Bucky, because apparently he can.

\--

“You got blood in my hair,” Bucky says, later, while they’re getting ready to go to bed. By silent agreement Steve brought his bag into Bucky’s room. Steve barely lets himself think about how it was because Bucky’s room had the double bed. Bucky claimed the bathroom first, and he’s brushing his teeth now.

“You were the one who hit me,” Steve calls back, grinning. The swelling in his lip has gone down by now, but it’s still tender when he presses against it. They didn’t manage to get much talking done, earlier, but they stood in Steve’s room and Bucky didn’t let him go and Steve didn’t stop holding him until Bucky relaxed. Just a hug but Steve’s heart was soaring as they stood there, so close, after thinking he wasn’t even allowed to look.

“You deserved it,” Bucky says, but his smile is warm when he’s coming out of the bathroom, towel around his neck, jeans low on his hips. Steve thinks he’s probably blushing; he hopes it doesn’t show too clearly.

“My turn?” he says.

“Go for it,” Bucky says, nodding. 

Steve has never taken so long to brush his teeth before. He comes back out to find Bucky under the covers, apparently asleep. He hasn’t put on a shirt. Steve wonders what else he’s wearing. He sits down on the bed, hard, because his knees feel a little weak and he can’t actually bring himself to get under the blanket with Bucky.

“Hey,” he hears from behind him, and he doesn’t jump when Bucky touches his back, but it’s a near thing. “Come to bed, Steve.”

He nods, and manages to unbend enough to do so. He doesn’t touch Bucky though, and Bucky doesn’t move to get close again.

“Night,” he manages, finally.

Bucky smiles at him, soft in the moonlight. “Sleep well,” he says.

\--

Steve wakes up first, and he should get out of bed and start breakfast, but he’s arrested by how calm Bucky’s face looks when he’s asleep. He looks like he used to, before the war. Steve lets himself reach out, running a hand through Bucky’s hair before getting up to go downstairs and make them something to eat. 

Bucky comes down once the coffee’s going. Steve hears him going down the stairs and starts to say something about being lazy and the toast getting cold, but he turns around and he can’t speak, suddenly. 

The dress is buttoned wrong, like Bucky didn’t want to look at himself while he was putting it on. He’s wearing his jeans underneath and his feet are bare. 

Steve swallows, puts down the plate of toast he’s holding and walks over to Bucky. “Can I?” he says, touching the first button. His voice is little more than a whisper.

Bucky just nods, eyes half-closing.

Steve unbuttons and re-buttons the dress, setting it right on Bucky’s shoulders. “There,” he says. “Come have breakfast.”

Bucky’s eyes are dark. “Yeah,” he says. 

After, Steve mentions walking in the woods, like they talked about before going up here. 

“I gotta change first,” Bucky says, plucking at the dress. 

Steve swallows. “You don’t have to,” he says.

“I don’t--Steve. Don’t be an idiot.”

“Tony said there aren’t any neighbors, really,” Steve says carefully. He doesn’t say he wants to see Bucky in the sunlight, dressed like this. 

“Doesn’t mean I should--” Bucky takes a deep breath and falls silent, looking at Steve. “You really want to take the risk of being seen with me in a, in a dress, Rogers?” 

“I wish you could wear it all the time,” Steve blurts out. It’s more honesty than he intends, complete with a shade of want that makes him blush. 

Bucky doesn’t look happy. “I’m not a girl,” he says. “I’m not, Steve, if you wish I was a girl--”

“No,” Steve says, because that’s not what he means. “I told you I’ve been wanting you for years, Bucky, what did you think I meant? That I wished you were a girl the whole time?”

Shaking his head, Bucky doesn’t answer at first. Then he says, halting, “I don’t know what I think you meant. I didn’t think anyone could, I mean. Not once they knew, anyway.”

“I do,” Steve says, and it’s terrifying to say, every time. He wonders if it’s ever going to feel less terrifying. 

\--

Bucky's so tense in the dress, even though they're in the middle of nowhere, the closest neighbor miles away. He's so tense. Steve thinks -- no, knows -- that Bucky's never been outside when he's like this before.

"Hey," he says helplessly, touching Bucky's shoulder, turning him to face Steve. "Hey, come here." And he kisses Bucky for the first time right there under the trees, sunlight sifting down through the leaves. Slow and careful, hands curving softly around Bucky's shoulders. 

"I'm not a girl, you know," Bucky mumbles when he breaks away from Steve. "We talked about this. You don't have to be so goddamn careful with me."

"I kind of do," Steve says, because Bucky's strong, Steve knows that, but right now it feels like Steve could break him in two with the wrong touch or the wrong word, even. And he doesn't know what the right words are.

“I won’t break,” Bucky says, and it’s a promise that Steve can finally believe, because Bucky’s smiling. Steve kisses that smile, he has to, he can’t not kiss Bucky when he smiles like that. Right now he has no idea how he ever kept from kissing Bucky. 

He doesn’t know how it happens, but they end up against a tree, Steve bracketing Bucky, his bare arms under Steve’s fingers. Steve can’t actually say anything, but he slides his hands up Bucky’s arms, trying to convey what he feels with touch. 

“Do it like you mean it,” Bucky says, and it’s a challenge, just like “I dare you to climb the fire escape” was, or “Eat the apple, Steve, I dare you,” once when Steve was sick enough to refuse all food. Steve doesn’t know how to back down when Bucky challenges him, so he does, hands gripping tighter, -- he touches Bucky and kisses him again.

“I want,” he says against Bucky’s jaw, “I want, can I.” His hands slide down, pushing Bucky’s hips against the tree.

“Whatever you want,” Bucky says weakly and it’s not a dare anymore, it’s a promise and a gift. 

So Steve goes down, gets on his knees in the grass, because what else is he going to do? His hands shake when he pushes up Bucky’s dress, coming to rest on the fly of Bucky’s jeans.

“Steve,” Bucky says, sounding breathless all of a sudden. “Steve, what--”

Steve doesn’t say anything, just unbuttons Bucky’s pants with trembling fingers. He’s bare underneath and Steve wants, he wants so much. He knows he’s blushing, his face feels like it’s on fire, but he pulls Bucky’s jeans down, gets his shoes off and helps him step out of the jeans, and then he touches his lips to the thin skin on Bucky’s hip. 

Bucky makes a noise like he’s been punched, low and hurt, and his fingers tangle in Steve’s hair. “You don’t, Steve. Fuck.” 

“I want to,” Steve manages, lips brushing over Bucky’s skin. “I want to, please. Let me.”

“Whatever you want,” Bucky says, a helpless echo of himself a few minutes ago and so Steve takes him in his mouth. He closes his eyes against the look on Bucky’s face and remembers every time he’s done this before, a confusing blur of alcohol and furtive encounters in bars, missing Bucky so fiercely it burned more than the whiskey did, going down. But Bucky’s here, now. Steve’s got him. 

And Steve wants him. Just like this, white summer dress pushed up around his hips, legs bare under Steve’s hands, dick hard in his mouth. Bucky’s hands are so gentle in his hair; Steve almost wishes he’d pull harder, because there’s nothing to distract him from how good it feels and it’s almost too much to bear. Being on his knees like this for Bucky, making him feel good, loving him like this.

“You’re too much,” Bucky pants. His voice sounds broken, so Steve opens his eyes, trying to reassure him. Bucky cups Steve’s jaw and touches his cheek, so gently Steve can barely feel it. He gets a hand on Bucky’s dick and moves his mouth down to meet it, then up again, in as steady a rhythm as he can. 

“Fuck, Steve--” Bucky says, back arching away from the tree. Steve pushes him into it again with the hand still holding Bucky’s dress up, trying to steady him. His mouth is full and it feels, it feels. 

Fuck. It’s like his first blowjob all over again, like none of the earlier ones mattered because none of them were Bucky. He’s scrawny and shaky and on his knees and he can’t be doing anything right but Bucky’s alive with want, warm and close and here. 

Bucky comes and Steve swallows, doesn’t even think twice. Bucky makes a broken noise and almost falls into Steve’s lap, kissing him like he’s trying to lick himself out of Steve’s mouth.

“I can’t believe you,” he mumbles finally, when they’ve maneuvered around so that Steve is the one leaning on the tree, still sitting, and Bucky’s straddling him. Steve’s very very hard, but he’s ignoring it in the face of Bucky’s hands on him, the way he looks so grateful, the way it’s like he’s let go of something he was carrying, the tension gone from his eyes. 

“I’ve wanted you for nearly ten years now,” Steve admits, and he turns his face into Bucky’s neck to hide it. 

Bucky’s fingers tilt his jaw back so that Steve is looking at him. He’s smiling – a little shaky, but he’s smiling. 

“Well, then we’re both idiots, aren’t we?” he says, and he kisses Steve while his clever, clever fingers go for his fly and pull him out, and oh, fuck.

“You don’t have to,” he manages, and Bucky laughs. 

“Trust me,” he murmurs, leaning in to kiss Steve again. “It’s not a hardship, darling.”

And Steve comes in Bucky’s hand in the sunshine that sifts through the trees and everything isn’t fixed and the world will still see them as wrong, but right then, there is no fear.


End file.
